Archive for the ‘Iraq war’ Category

On March the 18th, protesters will gather in towns and cities around the world to mark the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and the beginning of a war that still kills thousands of Iraqis every month.

This year the anti-war movement faces the threat of a new imperialist war, against Iraq’s eastern neighbour.

The United States is leading a campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme, and threatening the country with military action if it does not dismantle the uranium enrichment technology in its nuclear facilities.

Bush’s government used aggressive diplomacy to make sure that the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to send the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme to the United Nations Security Council, where the US has a permanent seat and immense influence. Bush has repeatedly said that is prepared to use violence to stop Iran’s nuclear programme even if he can’t get his way on the Security Council.

Iran’s government maintains that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, and after the lies they told about Iraq’s phantom ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ the US and other Western governments can’t be trusted when they say they are certain Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons. But even if Iran is seeking nukes, what right do the US and its allies have to complain?

The US is a country with many thousands of nukes aimed at targets around the globe and a history of aggressive action against scores of other states. The Middle East’s neighbourhood bully and US ally Israel sits on an arsenal of several hundred warheads.

Both the US and Israel continue to build new nuclear weapons – what right do they have to condemn Iran if it wants to do the same?

Poll after poll shows that Iranians support their country’s nuclear programme, and believe that they have a right to nuclear weapons.

Some racist commentators in the Western media have suggested that it is because they are a fanatical, bloodthirsty people, who long to fight a holy war against the US and Israel. But the Iranians know better than almost any other people the bloody reality of war. In the 1980s a million of them died defending their homeland against an invasion by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. At the time Saddam was an ally of the US, and the US had encouraged him to invade Iran because it wanted to topple the government there. More recently, Iranians have watched the US fight two bloody wars against Iraq. The war that began in March 2003 is estimated to have killed 150,000 Iraqis already. Now the Iranians hear Bush threatening attacks on their own country.

It is because they don’t want another war that the Iranians want nukes. Iranians realise that nukes would be a powerful deterrent against an attack by the US. They can see that the US invaded Iraq knowing that it had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, but backed away from attacking North Korea because that country had developed nukes.

A look at the whole history of the nuclear era bears out the Iranian point of view. The US says that nuclear proliferation is a threat to world peace, but the only time nukes have been used was before nuclear proliferation began, in the days when the US had a monopoly on the weapons. US President Harry Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki not to defeat Japan, which was already about to surrender, but to intimidate the rest of the world, and especially the Soviet Union and Red China. The US wanted to use nukes to make sure it controlled the post-war world.

In 1950 the US was bogged down in a war against Korea, and General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of their army, drew up plans to explode thirty nukes inside territory held by the North Korean army. Millions of Koreans were saved from death only because the Soviet Union had recently developed its own nukes as a deterrent to US aggression. The US was forced to shelve MacArthur’s plan after the Soviets threatened to retaliate for any nuclear strikes in Korea. Again and again in later years, the Soviet nuclear deterrent saved vulnerable Third World countries from US aggression. Who can blame the Iranians for wanting the same deterrent?

Most Kiwis dislike George Bush and oppose the wars he has started

At the same time, though, many of us are uneasy about the prospect of another country developing nuclear weapons. If a poll were taken today it is likely that only a fraction of us would support Iran’s right to nukes. But we only think like this because we haven’t stood in the shoes of Iranians and other peoples threatened by US imperialism. We live on islands at the bottom of the world, far away from hotspots like the Middle East. We’ve never been invaded, and we don’t have the hostile army of a nuclear superpower camped on our doorstep. The Iranians don’t have the luxury of rejecting nuclear weapons, and we need to understand that. If we don’t, we risk taking the side of the US and Israel in a new war.

The Green Party has already fallen into the trap of supporting the US campaign against Iran, by urging that the UN be used to ‘restrain Iran’.

Others are in danger of going down the same path. In a debate on the Indy media website, one activist said that he wanted to show ‘solidarity with anti-nuclear sentiments among the Iranian and wider Middle Eastern population’. If he looks, he will soon find that the only people in the Middle East interested in campaigning against Iran’s nuclear programme are Israelis and the US armed forces. Anti-war activists should show solidarity with the Iranian people by supporting Iran’s right to nukes.

But solidarity with Iran doesn’t mean political support for the country’s government

Iran is run by a gang of Islamic fundamentalists who hijacked the 1979 revolution against the US-backed Shah. The fundamentalists took power by killing their secularist rivals on the left, and they use violence to stay in power. In the last few months, for instance, the Iranian police and pro-government paramilitary organisations have been attacking and detaining the bus drivers of Tehran. The bus drivers have been campaigning and striking for better conditions and union rights, and three hundred of them have been detained for this ‘crime’. It’s not only trade unionists that the Iranian government attacks

Iranian women are regularly stoned to death for ‘crimes’ like adultery and pre-marital sex, and gay men are often hung if they are caught having sex.

We should support the Iranian nuclear programme, but we should also support trade unionists and other groups fighting against government repression.

Some Westerners argue that there is a contradiction between these two types of support. They say you can’t support Iran’s right to nukes without giving political support to the country’s government. What they ignore is the fact that Iranian people themselves support their country’s nuclear programme, at the same time as many of them oppose their country’s government. As Karl Vick notes, “Support [for the nuclear programme] runs deep in the population of 68 million, cutting across differences of education, age and, most significantly, attitudes toward the fundamentalist government”.

When we gather next month to mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we should also protest against the aggression of the US and the UN against Iran. But we can only oppose Bush’s new war drive by taking the side of the Iranian people by supporting Iran’s right to a nuclear deterrent. Leaflet issued by Workers Against the War Of Terror (WAWOT) February 2006

Recent evident proves beyond doubt that oil was the prime motive for the invasion of Iraq. Big Oil has gone on to make record profits. We argue that oil workers in Iraq, and in oil producing countries like Venezuela, and workers in the imperialist countries like the US, can unite to close this war and occupation down.

Greg Palast recently reported on the evidence that the invasion of Iraq had been long planned to seize control of the oil resources. The only issue was privatize or not.

“. . .Two years ago today – when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad – protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq’s oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of “Big Oil” executives and US State Department “pragmatists”. “Big Oil” appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began “within weeks” of Bush’s first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines [in Iraq] built on the premise that privatisation is coming Mr Falah Aljibury An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d’etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq’s oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq’s oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Fadhil Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel.

Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan’s “back-channel” to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq’s oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

“We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming.”

Privatisation blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq’s oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: “There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved.”

Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq’s oil fields.

He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a “no-brainer” decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, “I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain.”

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper’s Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. . .”

This plan worked. Not only are Iraq’s oil fields now controlled by Big Oil but oil profits have never been higher The ‘results are in’ according to Evelyn J Pringle:

“By the end of 2004, the big three American oil companies, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobile, and ConocoPhillips, realized profits of $33.6 billion during Bush’s first three years in office.

. . .On October 27, 2005, Reuter’s reported that Exxon Mobil posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion, “the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from soaring oil and gas prices.” Exxon’s record earnings topped the $9 billion net profit previously reported by Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Reuters said.

Exxon reported third-quarter net income up 75 percent from the year-ago period. “It was among the biggest quarterly profits of any company in history, and amounted to a per-minute profit of $74,879.23 during the quarter,” according to the October 28, 2005 Wall Street Journal.

“Shell, the third largest oil company by market value behind Exxon and Britain’s BP PLC, said its third-quarter net income rose 68 percent to $9.03 billion, on $76.44 billion in revenue,” the Journal reported.

According to the Federal Energy Information Administration, the price of a gallon of regular gas in the same week the profits were announced, was up 28% from a year ago. Natural-gas prices have almost doubled in the past year and the EIA predicts that owners of gas-heated homes will see a 48% hike this winter over last year’s already inflated prices, and homes heated with heating oil could see a 32% increase.”

Big Oil’s massive profits are at the expense of workers and poor peasants everywhere. Big Oil must be the main target of worker’s expropriation and control from Iraq, to Caracas to New Orleans!

Iraqi, Venezuelan and US workers can unite to shut down US Big Oil’s War!

While Big Oil makes record profits, Iraqi, Venezuelan and US workers have the power to shut down Big Oil and its oil for war. In Iraq the rebuilding of the Oil workers unions provides a platform for workers to fight to gain control of the nationalized oil industry back from Big Oil. At the same time Big Oil profits has driven up the cost of oil to US workers. Chavez provision of cheap heating oil to US workers opens up the opportunity for a higher level of class unity between Venezuelan and US workers that can block the supply of US oil for the war machine in Iraq!

The formation of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) independent of both the main union federations is a significant step forward. Representing over 23,000 workers in the key oil industry, across 3 provinces and nine state oil and gas companies, the union has a militant record and strong positions against the occupation and against privatization of oil.

“The union has on two separate occasions halted oil exports through strike action over unpaid wages, repressive Baathist managers and officials in the Ministry of Oil and land allocations for employees. It has successfully reconstructed infrastructure, port equipment, drilling rigs and pipelines without the help of foreign companies. It has succeeded in canceling the last two tiers of the Occupation’s Order 30 wage-table and raising the minimum wage for Iraqi oil workers from 69,000 Iraqi Dinar (US$32) per month to 102,000 ID (US$60) per month.

The union’s ‘Troops Out’ policy calls for the immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq.” It’s policy on ownership states “The privatization of oil and industrial sectors is the objective of all in the Iraqi state/government. We will stand firm against this imperialist plan that would hand over Iraq’s wealth to international capitalism such that the deprived Iraqi people would not benefit from it.”

While Big Oil can maximize its superprofits from the control of Iraqi oil without privatization (see previous story) the IFOU has the potential to take control of the oil industry from below and close down the imperialist siphoning of Iraq’s oil wealth. But they cannot do it alone. It is necessary for workers in the imperialist countries to shut down Big Oil at home, and for Venezuelan oil workers to take the lead in shutting off the supply to US oil for war.

Venezuela: for workers democracy in the oil industry

Chavez is using V oil as a ‘geopolitical weapon’ threatening US supplies, offering cheap oil to US workers, making plans for an alternative energy bloc in LA etc. But there is a problem. Chavez and his LA partners are national leaders who will not go all the way to nationalise and put under workers control the most powerful imperialist corporates – Big Oil. At best Chavez, Lula, Kirchner and Morales (the likely new Bolivian President) can only negotiate shares of the oil wealth to be retained in their countries. This leaves the giant share being of oil and gas being pumped out of LA and used power monopoly capital and its war of Terror. Only real worker ownership and control of oil and gas can reverse this process, stop the war for Big Oil, and make oil available to meet the needs of the masses of the world.

As we pointed out in the last issue, under Chavez’ control oil is being used as a weapon against workers. Not only to fuel the war in Iraq, but to strike break in Ecuador and at home in Venezuela where anti-strike legislation can be used by Chavez to lock out oil workers. Even the deals done with the Caribbean states and with China for cheap oil may not end up benefiting workers but the capitalists who are on the way back in Cuba and raking off huge profits from China. Unless oil is under real workers control it becomes a subsidy from the Venezuelan people to monopoly capital. The only way to ensure that workers benefit is to make sure that the ownership and control of Venezuelan oil is in the hands of the workers, so that its production and distribution can be planned by workers for workers.

US Workers: Hurricane Katrina and cheap oil

We can see how this would work in the case of the supply of cheap oil to the US. Chavez offer is for cheap oil to be administered by the Venezuelan owned Citric collaborating with local authorities. But Venezuelan oil workers could do better than that by offering free oil and demand that it be distributed by rank and file union groups in the US. This would become a platform to launch real workers control in Venezuela so that workers could renegotiate the current deals with Big Oil for exploration and exploitation of oil and gas. Chavez and the Bolivarian state energy policy of creating an alternative Latin American energy company called Petrosur, which would integrate regional oil and gas industries. But this plan is not based on the expropriation of the key Big Oil players in Latin America, Repsol, Petrobras, Exxon etc. It is an attempt to negotiate better terms with Big Oil. The limits to this collaboration with Big Oil are evident in Chavez deals with Kirchner, supplying oil to Ecuador to replace that lost by strike action, and his plans to introduced no-strike laws in Venezuela.

Real workers control will only result form the transformation of the workers organizations that co-manage nationalized industries along with the state taking complete control of industry from the state. The oil workers can show the way by fighting to take control of production and distribution of oil, setting the price and end use of oil.

No Oil for War! Iraqi and Venezuelan oil workers unite to smash Big Oil’s monopoly! Oil for the Poor! Iraqi, Venezuelan and US oil workers unite to defend the rights, wages and conditions of oil workers! Unite to distribute oil to the workers of the reserve army of unemployed in the US under rank and file control! No Oil to strike break! Follow the lead of the Venezuelan oil workers who condemned Chavez’ sale of oil to Ecuador as strike breaking! Workers control of production and distribution of oil to meet the needs of the world’s workers!

STOPPING THE WAR AND THE OCCUPATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FACING THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS!

A big leap forward in the anti-war movement

March 19, marking 2 years of occupation, saw an important step up in the international campaign to stop the war in Iraq. The mass rallies that took place right around the world called for “Troops Out Now”. In the US twice as many rallies were held than last March 19. 30,000 marched in the Bay Area, 15,000 in New York City.

Many of the 100,000 protesters in Italy, for example, added the demand that Iraqis have the right to resist the occupation. They were joined the previous day by 200,000 striking public sector workers opposed to the economic attacks of the pro-war Berlusconi Government. Others demanded solidarity with the Iraqi Resistance.

What was new on March 19 was the much increased rallying of organised labour. The connection between jobs, livelihoods, and war is being driven home to workers everywhere. Bosses’ wars take workers’ lives!

In the US the Million Worker March Movement, formed last year to protest Bush’s attacks on the labour movement, called for and co-sponsored the anti-war actions. The ILWU Local 10 in the Bay Area stopped work closing down the ports (photo above).

In New York City the rally marched through the African-American neighbourhood of Harlem and was addressed by Brenda Stokely a leader of the Day-care Workers Union.

In Auckland, NZ, the rally was organised by trade union activists and two of the four arrested by police were union organisers.

In Brussels over 100,000 youth, unionists and anti-war activists rallied linking demands for jobs, for a ‘social’ Europe (see article on Europe). in opposition to the imperialist war in Iraq.

In Turkey, prominent among the 20,000 were members of the Workers’ and Engineers Unions.

This growing labour activism is important, because while there are now over 5000 US troops who have refused to fight in one way or another, and while the Iraqi resistance continues to add to the toll of over 1500 US military personnel, only the mass strike action of the labour movement can bring the US and British military machines to a halt and defeat the imperialist war terrorists.

Only such a defeat can stop the imperialists from extending their ‘war of terror’ to Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond. Stopwork to stop the war!

Two examples: the ILWU Local 10 stopwork is part of a proud tradition in this union which stood against the Korean and Vietnam wars, and in 2003 resolved to oppose the US war against Iraq. The call to ‘stopwork to stop the war’ is a call that the international labour movement must now pick up and act on.

Second, in Auckland, New Zealand, a small militant protest of around 200 occupied the headquarters of the Australia and New Zealand Bank in the city for 30 minutes publicising the fact that this bank was profiteering from the occupation of Iraq and calling on the bank workers to take action against management.

This demand is a model for industrial action on the part of all those workers employed in the multinational banks, oil companies, military corporations and service providers currently profiteering in Iraq, to take industrial action against the blood money paid for by over 100,000 Iraqi lives during the occupation.

These two examples show how it is possible for organised labour internationally to take action to stop this imperialist war and occupation to re-colonise and plunder the assets of Iraq. Make MayDay Iraq Freedom Day!

This is why we have to take up the call of the Million Worker March movement in the US to make May Day an international day of labour action against the war!

May Day is the traditional day when workers all around the world commemorate the history of struggles that have advanced the cause and rights of workers. If there is a cause that unites workers globally it is to resist wars of their imperialist ruling classes. Workers are the cannon fodder expended in their bosses’ grab for territory and resources.

Workers sacrifice not only their lives, but their living standards as the huge financial cost of wars are taken out of the jobs, wages, health and other social spending vital to workers lives.

May Day is the day when workers must revive the traditional slogan that ‘Workers of the World Unite’ against bosses’ wars and their causes – the drive by imperialist bosses to make workers pay in every way in their grab for the diminishing resources of oil, gas, and other raw materials that sustain their profits. Solidarity with the Iraqi Resistance!

But it is Iraqi workers who pay the highest price in lives lost and a country smashed. Not only do Iraqi workers have the right to resist the imperialist occupation, workers everywhere have a duty to support them. The Iraqi workers alone have an interest in evicting the imperialist occupiers. This is because the various nationalist factions led by Baathist or Islamic leaders are only concerned to do deals with the US which will allow it to retain ultimate control over Iraq and the wealth created by Iraqi workers.

That is why on MayDay we must call for international support for the rebuilding of the Iraqi unions in defence of jobs, for the rights of women, for the nationalisation of industry under workers’ control, for imperialist reparations, and for a national plan to rebuild the economy under a workers and small farmers government!

For a class program, anti-imperialist and the fight for the unity of the world working class

Solidarity with the North American workers’ vanguard.

Support its anti-imperialist, internationalist and working class mobilizations for the 19th of March and 1st of May!

Call to the militant workers organizations of Latin America and of the world

The North American working class, the main ally of the exploited workers and peoples of the semi colonial world, because it can strike at the heart of imperialism, has begun to wake up. The vanguard workers of the United States and their militant organizations have begun to look for a way to fight against the war in Iraq, opposing their own imperialistic bourgeoisie, and the attacks that Bush and the ruling class make on their historic gains and living standards, and against the rotten union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, servants of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

They have launched the Movement of the Million Workers March against the war, adopting the call originally made by Local 10 of the Oakland dockworkers (ILWU). Hundreds of local unions have signed up to this call breaking the discipline of the bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO. The MWM Movement mobilized about ten thousand in Washington on 17th October 2004 calling for the immediate return of the Yankee troops from Iraq. Now, it has issued a new declaration, calling for “the unity of the rank and file of the unions in the fight for the rights of workers and the end of the war in Iraq”, raising an anti-imperialist and working class independence program, based on the united struggle of the international working class.

This call by the militant workers vanguard of the United States, stands up against the union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO which adheres to the sell-out World Social Forum. This declaration by our North American class brothers and sisters challenges the subservience of the AFL-CIO to Bush and the Democratic Party that is creating a big crisis in the unions in the US. The unions in the epoch of imperialism are totally dominated by the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy and their reformist programs. This proves that the rebuilding of the unions will only come as the result of the most militant workers guided by a revolutionary program.

This Movement and its declaration came as a breath of fresh air for the exploited workers and peoples of the world. It proves that the future of the North American working class is in the hands of its most exploited sectors, the African-American and migrant workers who are the backbone of the new militant movement. The African-American and Latino workers, immigrant workers, and the unemployed workers are the rank and file troops of this movement and they are flexing their muscles against the privileged workers aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, struggling to unleash the power of the North American working class! 19th of March, all out against the war in Iraq, all out for May Day all over the world!

In their struggle to revive proletarian internationalism, this new militant Movement has forged links with the Zengakuren students and the railway workers of Japan fighting against privatization of rail, marking a leap forward in the international cooperation of workers organizations.

A delegation of this Movement also joined with Japanese workers who traveled to Tokyo to protest outside the owners’ head office against the lockout of hotel workers in the USA. It has also established international solidarity links with the Korean Confederation of Unions (KCTU) as it prepares for a general strike.

Its call to the antiwar and workers organizations in the United States to jointly organize on the 19 of March – marking two years since the invasion of Iraq – a big mobilization in New York, demanding the immediate end of the war and the return of troops from Iraq, is a major step forward in the anti-imperialist struggle. Its call to reclaim the 1st of May as the international day of struggle for the world labor movement, with a worldwide day of action against the imperialist war in Iraq and in defense of the demands and the rights of workers, clearly marks an historical event for the world proletariat.

Long live the North American workers’ vanguard and its militant organizations, who have erected in full view of the world’s workers a barricade for class independence against the imperialist massacre of our Iraqi brothers and sisters by their own bourgeoisie, and against the workers aristocracy and the union bureaucracy, and for proletarian internationalism!

The North American workers vanguard raises the barricade of working class internationalism objectively opposed to the barricade of the World Social Forum and its politics of class collaboration

Though the leaders of the MWM Movement do not see this, the proletarian, anti-imperialist and internationalist demands of the Movement objectively raises a barricade against the World Social Forum and the policy of the AFL-CIO. In the heart of the imperialistic beast, class against class, there is now a class struggle barricade; a barricade against the World Social Forum, opposed to the policy of the AFL-CIO in the United States, and of the labor bureaucracies and the social imperialist parties of Europe, all serving the class interests of their own imperialist bourgeoisies; a barricade against the counter-revolutionary class collaboration politics of treacherous nationalism, which the Castroists, stalinists, and labor aristocracies and bureaucracies of all types –with the collaboration of the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism – try to strangle the vanguard of world working class.

It will not be the Iraqi bourgeois fractions, Shiite, Sunni or Kurd, all minor partners of imperialism and the betrayers of the national resistance against the invader, nor even the heroic resistance of the workers of that blood soaked nation that wins the war against the imperialistic invader. On the contrary, the main ally and the decisive factor in the victory and the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world, is the North American working class that is now beginning to find its strength to attack the imperialist beast at home.

It is not Chávez, Lula or Kirchner – nor Fidel Castro, the stalinist unions, the bureaucracies and the reformist leaders of all colors, who subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie and prop-up its regimes and governments – that are the allies of the working class and the poor farmers of Latin America. Rather it is the working class of the United States and in particular, the African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants – the most exploited, oppressed workers who are treated like pariahs – who today begin to find their strength and to organise themselves in the Million Workers Movement!

The big majority of the liquidationist currents of Trotskyism have now officially joined the World Social Forum at the 5th meeting in Porto Allegre at the end of January of 2005. They have already chosen their barricade: with the World Social Forum, blocking the road of the North American workers vanguard and its anti-imperialist, internationalist, working class program.

These currents were the ones who took the most militant representatives of the workers vanguard of Brazil, of Argentina, of Peru, of Latin America, to the meeting of that traitors’ forum in Porto Allegre, to try to subjugate them to their reformist policy of class collaboration.

Down with the World Social Forum of Lula, Chávez, Fidel Castro, of the AFL-CIO, all agents of imperialism and traitors to the Latin American and world revolution!

No subordination of the militant workers and their class struggle organizations to the World Social Forum!

To the militant workers organizations of Latin America and the world: Solidarity with the Million Workers March Movement and its mobilizations of March 19th & May 1st We revolutionary internationalists who have signed this declaration enthusiastically welcome and join our forces with the Movement of the Million Workers, and its two working class, anti-imperialist and internationalist calls of the March 19th and May 1s.

We call on our comrades in the different groups which are members of the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers organizations, to add their support and signature, and build together a great internationalist campaign.

We call on all the militant workers organizations of the countries in which we are active, and in the rest of the world, to play their part on the barricade that has been built by our class brothers and sisters of the United States. We call on the workers of the Subte [underground railway of Buenos Aires] and their delegates who are within reach of victory in their strike against the employer’s association, the union bureaucracy and the government of the imperialist lackey Kirchner; the miners of Turbio River, the piquetero movement, and the internal commissions, bodies of delegates, and militant workers organizations of Argentina; to the worker and youth vanguard that in Brazil which has built CONLUTAS to confront the union bureaucracy of the CUT that supports Lula; the militant working class organizations of Chile, of Peru, of Bolivia, and of New Zealand, all to adhere to the declaration of the Movement of the March of the Million Workers and to its two calls to action.

The barricade of North American workers vanguard is also our barricade in the fight for the revolutionary students of the Technological University of Oruro (UTO) in Bolivia, and those of the National University of the Comahue (UNCo) in Argentina, that rose in struggle for a University in the service of the workers and the people; it is the same barricade for all the militant anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist youth of Latin America and the world. We call on all of them to unite with the revolutionary students Zengakuren of Japan, who have adhered to and support the declaration and the calls to action of the Million Workers March Movement.

We call on the militant workers organizations and the anti-imperialist youth to take the struggle into their own hands so that March 19 becomes a day of anti-imperialist mobilization and class struggle everywhere in the world for the defeat of the imperialistic troops in Iraq, and support for the heroic Iraqi masses. We fight against the rotten politics of the World Social Forum which tries to neutralize the mobilizations and to remove their proletarian class character and substitute a reformist and pacific politics. The revolutionary organizations that have signed this call, undertake to fight inside all united front actions on March 19th to raise our class struggle program for the military defeat of the imperialist troops in Iraq, and for the victory of the indomitable resistance of the Iraqi masses.

We call on the militant workers organizations to reconquer the heroic tradition of proletarian internationalism of the world working class, which was suppressed by social democracy and stalinism: let us reclaim, alongside the North American workers, May 1st [May Day] 2005 as a day of world proletarian struggle, with strikes and mobilizations coordinated in every country! This is what is most urgently needed by our Iraqi brothers and sisters!

This is what we urgently need, the workers, and the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world! This is what we need to free from the jails the tens of thousands of worker and anti-imperialist fighters who the bourgeois imperialist regimes and governments keep as hostages, in Guantánamo, in Turkey, in Bolivia, in Argentina, etc.!

We call on workers everywhere to take the declaration and the two calls to action as motions to be discussed and voted on in the militant workers organizations of Latin America, of Europe, of Asia, of the world. For our part, we commit ourselves, on the honor of revolutionary internationalists, to build this struggle and to take these motions to the heart of the workers organizations and all the struggles of the exploited and oppressed in the countries where we are active.